What is a low-carbohydrate diet?
High-carb foods are those in the starch group. This includes potatoes, bread, and cereals. It also includes any food with sugar in it, such as relish, ketchup and all sweets. Health-giving beans and nuts have carbohydrates. Skim milk is higher in carbohydrates than whole milk. Heavy cream has practically no carbohydrates. Whole milk is in between in its amount of carbohydrates. Meats, fish, cheese, fats, and many vegetables are considered to be low-carb or carb-free. Most fruits, since they contain a form of sugar, are high-carb foods. High-carb foods have a high glycemic index. Foods with a high glycemic index serve to elevate your insulin levels too high. The result is that much of the calories contained within high-carb foods are stored as fat on your body rather than burned as fuel. The thinking behind the low-carb diet is that if you avoid these high GI foods, you’ll be able to eat all you want and still lose weight because most of it will be burned as fuel. The most recent report
Foods get their calories from protein, fats and carbohydrates. Most of the calories you eat come from carbohydrates and fats. Carbohydrates are starches and sugars, which are in foods like bread, pasta and sweets. Low-carbohydrate diets (or low-carb diets, for short) cut down on the amount of calories you get from sugars and starches. People on low-carb diets eat less bread, pasta, potatoes, rice and cereals. They usually eat more vegetables, meat, fish, cheese, eggs and nuts.
There are various forms of low-carbohydrates diets, but the basic premise is to reduce carbohydrates to below the recommended dietary allowance of 300 grams for a 2000-calorie per day diet. How much of a reduction depends on the plan followed. Possible risks of very low carbohydrate diets include kidney problems, gallstones, and ketonuria (spilling ketones in urine). The best way to lose weight is slowly with a lifestyle change as opposed to a transitory diet one expects to end at some point. It is healthiest to lose the weight slowly, and one is more likely to keep it off this way as well. When trying to get pregnant, it is important to consider nutritional standing before pregnancy, and whether or not a food plan can be continued once pregnancy is achieved. A diet in which ketones are spilled often, or continuously, could be harmful to the fetus.
